“Yeah, he’s cute. I wonder if he has a girlfriend. Where is he from? His shoes are nice, probably has money, a career. Is he from here? Maybe he’s just passing through. He’s not on his phone, poking at it like everyone else in line. That’s weird.” And on and on and on. You’re curious; you wonder. You think about that person, what kind of life that person has, based on the few clues you have in front of you. You make some assumptions. Now, cut to you having seen that person in a movie. He’s famous. Now what’s going on? Does your heart start pumping faster? Yeah. Why? It’s like when you see a guy in school you have a crush on.
“Oh my God, he’s walking this way, he must have changed his class order, ’cause I never see him walking down this hall before lunch. Oh God, he is IT . . .” Heart rate elevated. Pupils dilated.
You fight it, maybe even with this guy, this famous guy in front of you at the drugstore. “He’s just a person. Just a guy. Calm down. You are not going to ask for a picture. No. No. No. Be cool.” But, you are freaking out inside. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?
OK. OK. Your heart rate escalates in the hall of your school because you like that guy, you want to be with him, you like how you feel around him; it feels good. But, the actor in front of you at the drugstore? Perhaps it’s similar, that you want to be with him, even though you know nothing about him beyond the characters he’s played. Still, maybe. But what about when you feel that same way when it’s an actress? Or an older actor, or anyone famous? Anyone at all. Now our comparison with your crush in the hall at school falls flat. You don’t want romantic relationships with these famous people. But you suddenly do not entirely feel yourself in line at the drugstore because someone encased in a sheath of Fame is standing in front of you. You are reacting to the Fame. I don’t know what that is, that way it makes people freak out, or the way it makes their heart beat faster, or makes them divest themselves of their own personality when they’re in front of Fame. Maybe by the end of this book we’ll have a robust way to explain it, but for now, let’s just say it’s magic.
2000
I noticed around 2000, there was this seismic shift in the focus on Fame. There were, by then, many more print outlets, TV outlets, cable outlets that needed entertainment-based material. They’d painted themselves into a corner even, maybe, with the volume of material they needed. Pages and pages and hours and hours of material. The paparazzi population exploded. They were everywhere and they were anyone. Anyone could be in on it.
Actor and “forever brother” Michael J. Fox aptly puts it this way: “It’s like your neighbor down the street runs a media empire now.” Everybody is generating “content,” and much of it is focused on celebrities. They have their “media channels”: their Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat accounts with the “potential to reach outside your sphere.” That used to be almost nonexistent. There used to be just a few media outlets and just a few paparazzi. Ron Galella once asked, on the slopes of Aspen, years ago, if he could take my picture. I said no and he didn’t. Respect. And Roger (how do I not know your last name?), who was at every publicity event in his large, square glasses, low on his nose, with his multitude of cameras slung around his neck, over his shoulder, across his chest. Always there, early at those fake birthday parties Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines used to put together with all the teen stars at the time. Later, at premieres, at openings. Roger, so sweet, who used to bring me slides. No Internet, no WireImage.com to later look up the photos, to feverishly look up photos of yourself a few hours after the event. Roger used to bring slides to events, photos he took of me at the previous event. Roger, who I last saw in a booth at the Silver Spoon coffee shop on Santa Monica Boulevard, hunkered down in a semicircle with a gaggle of other old-school paparazzi. Roger. So sweet.
Pages and pages and hours and hours need to be filled. Many more paparazzi needed. Not just event photos now, but photos of celebrities everywhere, doing anything. And more celebrities. The reality show contestants. Sure, call them “celebrities.” Andy Warhol moments. We need them for the pages and the hours. Mike Fox told me that “the biggest prima donnas, the biggest pricks” he’d encountered at any red carpet event were always the reality show contestants. The conclusion being that when you have no discernable skills, you will have cultivated none of the tools you need to handle a public position. That there will have been no means by which you have paid your dues and worked your way—with your artistic craft—up through the ranks to a particular level in your profession, where perhaps Fame is bestowed upon you. If you are absent the work it takes to peck your way out of the eggshell, you will be absent the strength it takes to live outside of that eggshell.
So, yeah. Those who have had Fame placed on them because of skills and talents have a dismissive disdain for those who chased Fame through sensationalism and/or reality-show-contestant debauchery. It’s true. Honestly, reality shows are the cancer of America. Look at the current presidency. Oh fuck, I don’t want to argue over politics right now. We can get on Twitter for that. Find me at @JustineBateman and we’ll take it on. But truly, reality show mentality has diseased this country. Being paid for breathing, bringing nothing to the table, exerting minimum effort at hard work or skill development. Yeah, that’s what reality programming gave to our country. Living shit. We had that perfect storm around 2000. Reality shows were gaining traction around the same time that all these entertainment outlets needed more material. Match made in heaven. You also had society wanting to increase the odds of becoming famous, to make new opportunities. Hence, the increased popularity of reality shows. More “celebrities” means more material for the outlets. So, Heidi Montag, The Situation, and so on. I’m sure they’re fine people, but who are they?
* * *
An 18th-century satirist named Hugh Henry Brackenridge had a great take on why people without discernable skills and talents are raised up in society and given Fame. In Modern Chivalry, he talked about politicians and why some of the unqualified ones are lifted up by the voters. He mentioned this “power of creation” feeling that courses through people. That they can feel like God, even, if they lift someone up and make them famous. Look, what kind of “creating power” do we have if we merely notice that someone talented should have attention, should attain Fame? All we’re doing is noticing that. We are not then rewarded for having a general observation of the obvious. But if we lift someone up to the heights of Fame, someone who really wasn’t that good, wasn’t that talented, wasn’t that skilled, well, that’s all US; we did that. Not that person’s talent, not their skill, not some manifest destiny of Fame that some person’s skills makes obvious. No ma’am, that was all us. We can point to that famous person and say, “WE DID THAT.” In that sense, Brackenridge reasoned, in that sense, we can feel like God.
It’s like a Chutes and Ladders board game of Fame. That’s what we’ve set up in our society. Land on the right square, make the right move, walk the right amount of steps, and you will climb the ladder to a higher position, to Fame. Make the wrong move, step on the wrong square, and you take the slide way, way down, away from Fame. We set that up, as a society. We set that up and we built that scaffolding that sits underneath, those pylons and wood beams in the ocean, under the pier. We built that, together. We watch the 24 hours of “entertainment programming” on E! We buy InStyle and Entertainment Weekly and Premiere and US and People and OK! and In Touch Weekly and Life & Style. We watch Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood and talk shows in the night and in the day. We read gossip blogs and pass around TMZ videos. We stuff our faces with paparazzi photos of the famous, in line at the grocery store, consuming it, can’t get enough of it. Every day.
Now, what’s that about? Why is that structure, that support mechanism for Fame, kept so healthy, strong, and robust? We keep it healthy and strong and fed so we can maybe use it someday. “Me!” If you let it die, this support under Fame, you stop feeding it and it will no longer be there for you. If you don’t attend to the nail-in-the-wood maintenance of it, of the beams in the water under the pier, it will collapse, and that option for you will utterly disappear. So, we keep it healthy. We read the magazines and watch the shows, and buy the clothes and cars that the famous wear and drive. We create reality programming, even, to make this Chutes and Ladders board even wider. Bigger! More